Talk:Hanseatic League/Archive 2

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I requested quotes regarding highly interesting information that Hanse practised ethnic discrimination regarding its membership. If that is true, than it means ethnic discrimination was already in motion regarding non-Germans as early as 14th century in German made organisations. Since I am fascinated by history of Germany and its neighbours, I must confess this is very exciting info for me, if true.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 23:06, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

the source is quoted in the section below, it also clarifies that this was not a nationalist provision. Skäpperöd (talk) 06:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Certainly my understanding is that the Hanseatic cities (or the Hanseatic enclaves within the cities) were almost all German-run, even when they were surrounded by non-German land. But the Ostsiedlung meant that so many cities were established by German settlers in non-German lands (particularly the lands that were ruled by the Rzeczpospolita at its greatest extent), so that wouldn't have been very unusual, I would have thought?

I must admit, my knowledge of the Ostsiedlung isn't as good as I would like (and it's an area I'm reading up on increasingly). But I would be quite surprised if the Hansa weren't mainly a German (or at least Germanic) enterprise. Some of that will have been discrimination — and I would guess the attitude would have been that the Slavic peoples weren't "civilised enough", in much the same way as many of our ancestors 100–200 years ago would have thought the same of African, Asian and Native American peoples. It's worth remembering that the German peoples thought they were acting in everyone's best interests, even if many of their policies were obviously racist and barbaric from a 21st century perspective. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 23:55, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

You are correct except for the 'less civilized' part - it was more a social/law issue: German birth/law meant privileges allowing to act independently, Slavic birth/law meant strong dependency on the landlord. Note that German birth/law was necessary, but not sufficient to become a member - the (intermarried) group of rich patricians who were the initiators and bearers of the league, which furthered their interests. Thus, they only accepted members who were 'of their kind', otherwise, the league would cease to be their commercial and political instrument (which was the sole purpose of it). Above, user Henrig made ceveral comments on the background of the league's merchants which I second. With that background in mind, discussion about any nationalist interpretation of the league's provisions is moot (and the source cited below explicitely outrules such an interpretation anyways). Skäpperöd (talk) 06:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Certainly my understanding is that the Hanseatic cities were almost all German-run-depends on region. Those in Poland were not(although there were attempts). But the Ostsiedlung meant that so many cities were established by German settlers I would caution against reading that article, it needs numerous correction and was written from an outdated solely German POV. Regarding your question, no the cities in Poland existed long before German settlers came. The "founding" refers only to adoption of certain administrative solutions which later was picked up by German nationalist historians in XIX century as start of these cities. This sometimes is reflected in German historiography or less informed Western publications.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 00:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Those in Poland were not - we probably don't need to discuss the Hanseatic towns of the Prussian confederation here, who came to the Polish crown from the Teutonic Order. As to Cracow, yes, there was the Wawel and a surrounding settlement before the planned (and much larger) town north of the Wawel was founded anew (Brather 2001: 158; same is true for Breslau though not part of Poland during its Hanseatic era.) This new Cracow was chartered with German town law in 1257 (Carter 1994: 64), and in the foundation charter locals (i.e. Poles) were explicitely barred from settling there (Brather 2001: 87), making the town a German enclave (Carter 1994: 64, quote: "settlement almost entirely German in origin; all matters concerning their own welfare were solved according to their own German judicature".) The Wawel and the adjacend settlement in contrast remained Polish (ibid.). And before the exclusion of Poles in 1257 is again interpreted in a nationalist sense, it was not the German community who excluded them, but the respective Polish duke (Brather 2001: 87.) Skäpperöd (talk) 06:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Except both Wrocław and Kraków were thriving cities with thousands of citizens long before any newcomers came from what would be called Germany hundreds years. And I really doubt that we can call them Germans in the meaning we use today.But yes, your "creative" use of sources to push forward your view that these were new cities is known to me.As to Kraków being ruled by Germans, that little attempt was thwarted by Łokietek, now recognised as one of Polish prominent historic political leaders. In any case it has little to do wit with this topic(both Wrocław and Kraków had little connection to Hansa).--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 08:25, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

@Skapp. Funny you should bring up Carter - to cite that "Cracow was chartered with German town law in 1257", which it was, but that didn't mean anything except a change in some of the laws that governed it. This is the standard pov tactic on Wikipedia, as has often been pointed out; to pretend that "founded on German law" meant "build by Germans" whereas in most cases it just meant "given privileges based on those of German towns of Lubeck or Magdeburg to pre-existing towns". Lviv was "founded on German law" but (at the time) it probably didn't have a single German in it. So, like I said funny you should bring up Carter, who says:

"Some German historians are inclined to regard Polish medieval towns as a result of municipal German colonization in the East, or even as East German towns. Towns, however, existed in Poland long before German colonists came, and the urban centres contained numerous nationalities as well as Poles" (pg. 381)

I think that's pretty much as direct a refutation of this notion that "founding on German law"="built by Germans" that you've been pushing across half a dozen articles, as one can get. And of course Carter is mostly referring to 19th century German nationalist historians, basically saying the same thing that MyMoloboaccount is saying above. There's no reason to propagate 19th century nationalist German propaganda on Wikipedia.Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:07, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting; looks like I need to do some more reading on the Ostsiedlung and the pre-Rzeczpospolita history of Slavic lands. Any (English language) texts people would recommend? — OwenBlacker (Talk) 09:45, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

short overview (by a Polish historian, but translated into English): [1] Skäpperöd (talk) 10:42, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

You can also check out the Cambridge History of Poland. Main points [2]:

The Study of German colonization in Poland in the Middle Ages requires that this term should be defined - actually the lack of a definition of what is meant by "colonization", "founding", "localization" is the main POV plague of the articles that deal with the subject. Some editors refuse to provide these definitions - of what are essentially specialist terms of the historian, with a somewhat different meaning than common parlance - because they prefer for these terms to mislead.

In Poland, as in Hungary, no colonization in the strict sense of the word took place, as there never was any mass immigration from Germany. It goes on to talk about how most of the "colonization" and "migration" was actually by local natives and the internal population, but because the towns they moved to where given "German law" this became known as "German colonization". Even though "The number of (German) settlers was small in comparison with native population".

There's also another source out there which actually breaks down the number of towns and villages "founded" by region and explicitly states which were "founded as in build" and which were "founded as in given new laws", and of those which were in fact actually built how many were settled with natives (basically medieval rural-urban migration which was already happening at this time all over Europe) and how many with newly arrived German colonists. I can't find the source on line atm but it was pretty illuminating - vast majority of these new settlements were done with natives.

And then there is also: "The German historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, conforming to the political theory of "the historic mission of German culture in Eastern Europe", are inclined to exaggerate the importance of settlement with German law"Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:26, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The respective chapter in the Cambridge History of Poland [3] linked and discussed by VM is the view of M. Z. Jedlicki from 1950. Skäpperöd (talk) 01:21, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

1) Source?

2) Provided that 1) is addressed, so what? What's your point? Are you implying that Cambridge History of Poland is an unreliable source? Take it to RSN board then.

Volunteer Marek (talk) 01:30, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

re 1) You linked the book yourself, author (Jedlicki) and year of publication (1950) are indicated in the book, but also in any OPAC, e.g. here

re 2) The same Jedlicki (1899-1954) whose positions you advertise in your posting above has published "Thousand years of German aggression" just a few years earlier. Jedlicki was an able person who e.g. translated Thietmar into Polish, but in evaluating his war-time/post-war publications one has to take into account the circumstances under which these publications were made. Skäpperöd (talk) 08:16, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually the word Jedlicki does not appear in my link. Regardless, if you think that Cambridge History of... series are not a reliable source, please take it to RSN. The 1000 years book was written DURING World War II ("just a few years earlier") while he was in exile I believe. CHoP was written after the war, apparently while he was dean or department head of Law and History at Jagiellon University or University of Poznan (can't remember exactly). So if I were using the 1000 years book then yes, then maybe we can talk about circumstances. But here I am just using Cambridge History of Poland. Again, RSN is over here.Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:04, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

@Molobo/VM: You sure know that Cracow was burnt down by the Mongols in 1241? And how does the pre- or co-existence of a settlement contradict the founding of a new town in its vicinity, as it is sourced above? @Volunteer Marek: If you have reason to think that Carter and Brather are not reliable, go to the RS board. Where did I make the claim that everywhere "'founded on German law' meant 'build by Germans'" as you claim above? Where did I push such a POV "across half a dozen articles"? I know perfectly well that this is not true as a general statement, don't put those words in my mouth.

All these unfounded accusations unfortunately distract from the purpose of my statement: I have quoted reliable sources that there were German merchants in Cracow during its Hansa times, and that the town did have a German law charter, and thus there is no contradiction between the membership of Cracow and the Hammel-Kiesow source.Skäpperöd (talk) 10:32, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The old theory that Mongols destroyed all of Poland so Germans repopulated it, is well known to me. Fortunately I also read more modern works. The old discarded theories that Ostsiedlung settlements were "new" is also known to me. Anyway, nobody here disputed that Kraków had links with Hansa, it was the arbitrary circle that was disputed. Btw, you seem to be heavily relaying on Piskorski for your claims. They are numerous other researchers with far more credentials and "heavy weight" in scholarships like Gerard Labuda. Not to mention, that in many cases Piskorski actually writes things that do not support your views. But this is largely off-topic here.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 12:20, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Skapperod: If you have reason to think that Carter and Brather are not reliable, go to the RS board.

Me: What in the world are you talking about? Where did I indicate anything resembling the idea that I consider these guys non-reliable? In fact, I just quoted Carter to you, to show that the source you provided contradicts the claims you are making. Why are you telling me to take it to the RS board? Is this a way of deflecting an argument? I'll AGF here and just assume that you did not actually read my comment.

Skapperod: Where did I make the claim that everywhere "'founded on German law' meant 'build by Germans'"

Me: Pretty much on the History of Pomerania articles, and even here - where your wording, while not exactly stating that, does try to imply it. Let's see:

we probably don't need to discuss the Hanseatic towns of the Prussian confederation here, who came to the Polish crown from the Teutonic Order - and they came to the Teutonic Order either from Poland or from the Old Prussians. Are you seriously saying that there was no town of Gdansk/Danzig, until the TO got there? But I do like how you phrase your comment to suggest that the matter is completely settled (and in accordance with your views) and hence no discussion is even necessary.

This new Cracow was chartered with German town law in 1257 - yes, but as Carter himself says, "chartered with German town law" did not mean "build by Germans". Yes, the existing town was expanded and a new neighborhood for German settlers was constructed, and they were given their own laws. And yes Mongols got there. But it doesn't mean Cracow was build in 1257 anymore than that London was build in 1667.

As to Cracow, yes, there was the Wawel and a surrounding settlement before the planned (and much larger) town north of the Wawel was founded anew - same old misleading pov pushing, that somehow, until the Germans showed up, Cracow was just a "settlement". This is of course total nonsense. Mongols didn't change that.

same is true for Breslau - yes same thing was true for Wroclaw. It was a town long before any Germans moved there.

making the town a German enclave (Carter 1994: 64, quote: "settlement almost entirely German in origin; all matters concerning their own welfare were solved according to their own German judicature".) - Again, more monkey business with terminology, except it's flipped this time. The source does NOT say "the town (was) a German enclave". You added the "town" part.

So basically if Germans lived there and sources call it a "settlement" you change it to "town". If Slavs lived there and sources call it a "town" you change it to "settlement". Like, you know, there were no "towns", only "settlements" in India or China or Egypt until the British build them as part of their empire. No towns in Mexico either until the Spanish got there. It's just the 19th century, now largely debunked, colonialist narrative. It's pov pushing. Sneaky pov pushing, but pov pushing nonetheless, particularly since this is an established pattern, as evidence at other article like History of Pomerania. And it's directly contradicted by the very source you provide, Carter, which you are now pretending I am questioning for some reason.Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Marek, you are correct, but tying a knot on yourself in your argumentation. Krakow wasn't a town before 1257, because it wasn't chartered by town law. That's a normal usage of the word. Hence, before it's rebuilding after the Mongol invasion, yeah, it wasn't a town. At least in one sense...  :-) That part of the debate can probably be avoided by using the German word instead: Stadt. In which case it was a town before and a stadt after the chartering. :-) --OpenFuture (talk) 19:38, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

@VM: I asked: Where did I make the claim that everywhere "'founded on German law' meant 'build by Germans'", you replied Pretty much on the History of Pomerania articles, and even here - where your wording, while not exactly stating that, does try to imply it. That is kind of symptomatic for this "discussion" - I did not say that such a statement is generally true anywhere on the History of Pomerania articles, neither here, where I even explicitely refuted it. You go lengths to show what you think I want to "imply," and then rebut my alleged implications. I ask you to stop that.

• Did the Magdeburg-law Cracow exist prior to 1257? No. It was built only then as a planned town (the checkerboard type rectangle north of the Wawel), cf. Brather 2001: 158, and was in that stage populated almost exclusively with Germans, cf. Brather 2001: 87 and Carter 1994: 64; locals were even explicitely excluded from participating (Brather 2001: 87).
• Did Cracow exist before 1257? Yes. And Wawel and Okol were rebuilt after the Mongols had burned it down in 1241.
• Was Cracow a town before 1257? Depends on the definition of town.
• Is it relevant for the Hanseatic league whether Cracow existed before 1257 or whether historians address the pre-1257 Cracow as town, proto-town, early town or whatever? No. it is, per the premises listed by Hammel-Kiesow, relevant for the Hanseatic league that there was a community of German merchants who lived according to German law while the town was part of the Hansa, everything else discussed here is OT.

Skäpperöd (talk) 01:21, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Quick, did Beijing received "German" town law in its history ? Skapperod should probably inform authorities that they are still not a city ;) Let's end this absurd discussion. Cities don't lose magically their city status just because they don't have Germans in them or don't use administrative regulations coming from area later known as Germany. While I appreciate the experience of wandering deep into the mindset of XIX century German historiography, this has gone too far offtopic here I believe.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 09:13, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I never claimed anywhere that there are no towns without German town law, that would indeed be a stupid claim to make, don't attribute that to me. And I sincerely hope that your "mindset of XIX century German historiography" posting was not in any way directed at me, one could read your comment that way since you explicitely mentioned my alias, and you ought to clarify that. Skäpperöd (talk) 10:02, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

If you're gonna insist on putting the emblem of the Teutonic Order [4] for the cities of Royal Prussia, then the emblem of the Kingdom of Poland should be added as well. Then we'd have three emblems. I personally think that just having the emblem of Royal Prussia by itself was good enough and that slapping the TO sign is just territory marking. We don't have the HRE emblem in all these towns. So I propose either removing the TO emblem and keeping just the Royal Prussia one (my first choice), or adding the Kingdom of Poland emblem (second choice). The way it is now has an obvious nationalist slant and hence is POV.Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:49, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

re "slapping the TO sign is just territory marking" and all that: I really don't know what upsets you so much? During the time the towns in question were members of the Hanseatic League, they were first in the territory of the Teutonic Order state, and then in Royal Prussia. So why should one omit the Teutonic Order state when defining the territory the town was in, and just list Royal Prussia as you proposed above? Where is that "obvious nationalist slant" you are talking about? Skäpperöd (talk) 22:14, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

they were first in the territory of the Teutonic Order state, and then in Royal Prussia - well, that's the slant right there. They were first in the territory of the Teutonic Order state, and then in the territory of Kingdom of Poland, of which RP happened to be a province. It's like saying that Santa Fe was first part of Mexico, and then part of New Mexico. I mean, it's true in a literal kind of way, but it's definitely (and perhaps purposely - in that it seems to suggest that it's not part of the US) misleading. It's a category mistake, a kind of logical fallacy. I can easily ask you the same question; why omit Kingdom of Poland when defining the territory the town was in?Volunteer Marek (talk) 22:31, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The emblems in that table for the Hansa time are somewhat misleading in general. It was not so easy. The Hanseatic towns themselves were as League a great European Sea Power, which were victorious in sea wars against states, which where European Great Powers, but as towns not an own state, and often dependent on good relations with the heads of the different local territories, acknowledging them by name as head of state, but being anxious, that they don't try to rule the cities themselves. This was for example the reason, that Danzig prefered as member of the Prussian Confederation the king of Poland as a head instead of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, after the Polish king ensured not to rule the city itself. An important aspect for membership in the league was often the factual widely independency and applications for membership were often declined for that reason with only a few exceptions for strategic reasons. So, why adding such emblems at all? Henrig (talk) 20:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, my understanding is that the emblems are added so to alleviate the confusion that can arise from the fact that these purported "circles" did not coincide with the actual states - Swedish towns were actually in the Wendish circle, while non-Swedish towns were in the Swedish circle etc. So they're meant as a sort of clarification.

Other than that I agree with your statement and pretty much everything I've read points in that direction; economic interests and factors played a more significant role than nationalistic ones (which were still present). This is why so many of these German speaking burghers preferred to be part of Poland rather than some nearby German state; lower taxes and more autonomy. For some this, actually did transform into Polish patriotism and acculturation (which is why you get quite a few Poles-with-German-names in the uprisings during the partitions and resistance in WWI and II (though granted, lots of these acculturated folks were really Flemish etc.)).Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:55, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, the second part of your posting would led to a large and wide topic with many aspects. You have counted a few of these aspects touching very different times. Regarding the Hanse time, it's known, that the ruling families had a long tradition of businesslike thinking. They tried to maintain the capability of their cities to act independently and good relations to the better partner. Young well-trained employees of their trade houses, educated in this spirit, often saw their own chance as merchants in the countries, which they had known from business, when the economic environment was convenient there... They married there and so on. Regarding the Polish uprisings, it's known, that, for instance, Tadeusz Kościuszko then was seen in wide parts of Europe as a liberty hero and naturally also among ethnic Germans in Poland, who identified with his aims. It's well imaginable, what you've written in this posting. Henrig (talk) 07:28, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There is no need to alleviate the confusion, the Penguin map, which puts Swedish towns in the Wendish circle and Livonians towns in the Swedish circle are without a shadow of a doubt simply incorrect. All other sources agree that the Livonian towns are in the Livonian group, quite unsurprisingly. We must ignore the Penguin map, it's wrong. Yes even Penguin can make mistakes. ;) --OpenFuture (talk) 08:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Exhaustive lists of Hanseatic towns are available online at

• the-orb.net, who [says about itself that it is a peer-reviewed scholary source
• from the list in Dollinger (1998): Die Hanse, there is a [snippet preview available at google books. The whole list is online on various webpages, e.g. at hansaland.org or de.wikipedia (these lists, though not RSs, can be confirmed as Dollingers, which is a RS, by using the snippet preview function from google books). The Dollinger list specifies both territorial/political entity and region the towns are in.

Skäpperöd (talk)

the-orb.net? Very nice, they list Wrocław as part of Prussia and Poland :) Neither one is correct.

Dollinger btw lists a group as Preußen, Schlesien und Polen-which is different from this one in the article--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 22:34, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

So how does Dollinger's "Preußen, Schlesien und Polen" circle relate to the "Prussian, Livonian and Swedish" circle? It really does seem like these taxonomies, aside perhaps from the Wendish one, are idiosyncratic to individual authors.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:06, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Nowhere do these lists claim that the regional subdivisions used there as section headers are the Hanseatic circles. It's just their way of structuring the long lists (200 towns). Skäpperöd (talk) 07:12, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

1. The list on the-orb is messed up, and not the same as Dillingers. [5] 2. Dillingers actual list shows Breslau/Wrocław, Krakow and Stockholm as towns that played an important part in Hanseatic affairs. I interpret that as that they were *not* hanseatic towns, as in fact none of these were, but had large connections with the Hansa and a significant german settlement. 3. He lists them in "geographical groups". What does that mean? Theses groups seem to overlap somewhat with other groupings, but in other ways not. IMO this is the best list of towns I have seen so far, and I think we should base our listing on this. But I'll have to see how the groupings match with other sources. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:13, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for providing the link to a full preview of the Dollinger list. The towns in italics were Hanseatic towns:

• Source for Breslau [6] (Wernicke, expert on Hansa, compares the Hanseatic towns Stettin, Breslau and Frankfurt/O)
• Source for Cracow [7] (Carter's book about Cracow, he mentions Cracow as Hanseatic numerous times and has a dedicated chapter about Cracow's time in the league, the link goes to the page where he discusses when Cracow joined)
• Source for Stockholm [8] (Dollinger's discussion about whether the towns of Stockholm, Kalmar and Nyköping or only the German-Swedish merchants were members of the league, he concludes: Stockholm "indisputably" yes, and a more cautious yes for the other two; caveat: 14th cty)

Skäpperöd (talk) 09:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, at a first glance it looked like his Italicied cities matched well with cities other sources didn't mention, but at closer looks it's not that easy. His geographical groupings doesn't seem to match any other grouping though, so I don't think that is going to be useful. --OpenFuture (talk) 10:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

In the current list, we group per circle (which had turned out to be difficult for tangential members) and per political territorial entity (which is perhaps more unambiguous than region). Given the many (200) towns that need to be included in the list, we need at least some kind of structure. OwenBlacketer's idea of a sortable table is not bad, users will then have many options to structure the list (alphabetical, chronological, by territory, by circle). On the other hand, it's gonna be lots of code, maybe we have to split the list from the article after all towns are added. Skäpperöd (talk) 10:50, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem with the "circles" is that there seems to be very little agreement over sources/time on what those were. So I don't think we should use them. There seems to be a more stable grouping, but the only good source we have for that is the London charter, and even that grouping seems slightly liquid. The table as it is now it also based partly on a source that is clearly wildly incorrect, making it even worse. --OpenFuture (talk) 11:39, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Here is a list comparing the sources we have so far: User:OpenFuture/Hansa_city_lists --OpenFuture (talk) 12:46, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Good work, hand-made or magic? Since the regions given by the sources listed in the table conflict only in a few cases, we could integrate the towns' column and a combined regions' column from your table into OwenBlacketer's table. For towns were the Quartier is not clear, we can leave it blank or attribute conflicting sources. To reduce the code size, we could also introduce a separate column for the CoAs, that way we do not need to wrap every entry into a sort template with a duplicate index name for the sorting machinery. We can also remove the ref column and place the refs directly behind the words they source - that seems unavoidable to me anyway since for many rows there will be (or is already) information from different sources. Skäpperöd (talk) 00:05, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Handmade, and two of the sources was images so I couldn't even cut and paste (phew)! The problem is what to when the sources do conflict, and unfortunately there the best source of cities is Dollinger and his regional split doesn't fit the others very well at all. The most reliable one is the London Charter, but it is quite short.

"For towns were the Quartier is not clear" - Well, that's almost all of them. As you'll notice, my list is based on smaller groupings, except for Penguins Historical Atlas, which, as has been shown above and repeated many times, has many errors, and include cities no other source includes (despite being the shortest list) for example Prague. It can't be used as a source when it contradicts other sources, and that means it doesn't need to be used at all. The Regionalism in Europe book claims the East Baltic circle doesn't include Sweden. How do we deal with that? And most importantly, for a large part of Hansas history, there was no Quartiere, there was Drittels. I think it's better to split them into the smaller geographical groupings for that reason. We need only include the major towns in the main list, towns which are listen in both Dollinger and either the London charter or Extent of Hansa. All other can just be in a sorted list by name as "Minor Hansa cities" or something. --OpenFuture (talk) 07:16, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Hm, by determining which town is "major" and which one is "minor" you will come into hell's kitchen. Eg, that a town did not trade in London does not necessaruily mean that it played a minor role elsewhere, and there are towns that were important in some periods and unimportant (or not even a member) in others. E.g. the much-discussed Cracow, member for ~100 years, did not visit any Tagfahrt, but was in continuous correspondence with Hanseatic towns and traded under the Hanseatic flag in Flandres - major or minor? Or Anklam, Wendish town of the first hour, but gradually losing importance in the following centuries. I don't think that we will be able to find valid criteria for "major" and "minor," there are only a handful (Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Stralsund, Danzig) who undisputably can be addressed as "major", and for the rest, it's tricky.

Regarding the regions - I really don't see much conflict there. Ijssel, Overijssel, Zuiderzee and Geldern are 'Dutch', Overheidnisch is Saxon, Overwendisch is Wendish and Pomeranian, the only not quite compatible groupings are Dollinger's divisions by the rivers Rhine and Oder, but regarding the Oder, it is Wendish and Pomeranian no matter on which side of the Oder, and regarding the Rhine, Dollinger has listed the Westphalian towns east of the Rhine as Westphalia and created a group Rhine-Maas which comprises afais Dutch and Westphalian towns which have to be split according to the other sources or common sense,for ambiguous towns (Roermond) we can always leave it blank or attribute conflicting sources. Skäpperöd (talk) 08:48, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Dollinger splits Saxony into Central Germany, Lower Saxony and The North Sea Coast. Pomerania is split into East of Oder and West of Oder, where West of Oder also gets the Wendish group, except Hamburg that ends up in the North Sea Coast which also gets Gröningen, whereas the others put those in a Dutch group. In fact the only of his groups that match the other sources well is the Westphalian, Prussian, Swedish (2 towns match) and Livonian (3 towns match) groups. Dollinger can be used as an "arbiter" in some cases where Extent of Hansa and the London Charter disagrees, but otherwise that grouping is just to different, unless we can get more reliable sources that support it. He seems to have organized it after his arbitrary geography, and not after how the Hansa itself organized it. Common sense is not a reliable source, so we can't use that. :) --OpenFuture (talk) 09:28, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Hm, convinced that the sourced attribution of a region will be harder than I first thought, so we probably should settle on leaving them out and list the political entity only, as it is in OwenBlacker's table now, to avoid potential disputes? Skäpperöd (talk) 10:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Possibly. But I added a column to the table, listing how many sources agrees. There are only 44 cities where all sources that mention it agree, while there are at my kind 95 cities mentioned in more than one source. That's a pretty dismal state of affairs, although it gets a bit better if we let the Extent of Hansas "Dutch" group simply encompass the London Charters "Frisische", "Geldriche" and "Overyselche" groups.

I think we could use the groups used by the sources that agree the most, and that is the London Charter and the Extent of Hansa, which only have a couple of cities that disagree, if you "merge" the three Dutch groups. --OpenFuture (talk) 10:30, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Both Wrocław and Kraków are actually mentioned in one of the sources as having minor role due to lack of sea connection among other things.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 10:27, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Based on this overview of the sources we have User:OpenFuture/Hansa_city_lists and the discussions above, I think we should list the cities not according to Drittel or Quartier, but according to the groups used the London Charter and the Extent of Hansa. As the Extent of Hansa has English names, a shorter name for "Overheidische und Sächsiche" and also includes a Swedish group, I think we should use the Extent of Hansa groups. My proposal is as such:

1. We use the groups "Dutch", "Livonian", "Margravian", "Pomerianian", "Prussian", "Saxon", "Swedish", "Wendish" and "Westphalian" as the grouping.
2. We include only cities mentioned in at least three of the sources in the list (around 52 in my count), and use the group that the most sources agree on for that town, with a note if they disagree.
3. The cities mentioned in two of the sources are added to a second list, in alphabetic order as "Minor Hansa cities" replacing the list of "Other cities with a Hansa community" that exists now.
4. Cities mentioned in only one source are ignored.

Opinions/Straw polls welcome. :-) --OpenFuture (talk) 10:30, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

To elaborate on my comment above, I don't think that we should use such an arbitrary inclusion criterium as "mentioned in at least three of the sources in the list"; e.g. the search string "Demmin+Hanse" returns 2.700 results at google books [9], but because Demmin is only on one of the 4 arbitrarily chosen lists it would not be included. There are other (incomplete) lists, too, e.g. this one listing 85 towns (fn1), this one also listing 85 members, this one listing a few "most important" members (incl. Demmin btw), this one listing 58 "core cities", this one and this one both listing 85 towns, this one listing 80-90 towns, or this one dividing the hansa in drittel. These are only some results from full preview lists on google books, there are certainly more.

We have the exhaustive Dollinger list, all other lists only have a faction on them. We should use the Dollinger list, and if we add a "region" column to the table, then towns where no source states the region or where different sources state different regions, we leave the field blank or attribute the different regions, respectively. With "different" here I mean really different, not just two different words for the same region (e.g. if one source says Overijssel, another says Dutch, then we might use Dutch.) We should in any case keep the territory column, as in contrast to the region, which is more or less arbitrarily defined by the authors of the respective compilations, the political entity is a factual, unambiguous value. Skäpperöd (talk) 12:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

As I've put up there on the page just now (but don't want to interfere too much) there should be a main page devoted to an exhaustive list. This article is best focused on history, politics, economics and so on of the Hanseatic League, but then with a prominent link to the main page for the list. Glad to see people working on this! Wikidea 14:57, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Having all Dollingers 200 cities in one table with regional columns etc is definitely to big for this article. A separate article solves that, and the Skäpperöds proposal works for me. --OpenFuture (talk) 17:43, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikiidea's idea to split off the list into a separate article - Organization of the Hanseatic League or something - and then just link it here (and maybe just mention the "chief" cities, if we can figure these out) is a good one. It's starting to look as that sub topic by itself is sufficiently detailed to warrant a separate article, and there, we can get into the nitty gritty of of what the various sources say, how they contradict each other, how it changed over time etc.Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:40, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, not sure what I think of this. Can we leave this for a couple of days, so I can have a chance to decide what I think and contribute thoughts? I'm off work Thursday and Friday, so should be able to give some thoughts on Thursday. ;o)

Also, I'm in the middle of adding a bunch of references to the current table, which would be a lot more difficult to integrate if the table gets changed substantially before then. Thanks! — OwenBlacker (Talk) 23:43, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, no problem, take your time. We seem to have reached a lull in the discussion anyway. I'm also looking more into the economics of the Hansa and will probably raise that in a little bit.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:59, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I still have some more research to do, but I've committed my edits so far, with a load more references (and I've standardised the references to use {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}} and {{cite web}} throughout, with {{rp}} for page references where several pages are referenced in the same source. I'm tempted to dump the {{rp}} calls, though (and just leave the page number ambiguous in each reference), as it's all getting a little untidy. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 23:06, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

PS: Oh, we might want to move the lists (the table and the two lists thereafter) into a separate article; I'm happy with that either way. If anyone does split the lists out, though, be aware that some of the references used in the lists are from earlier in the article, so would need to be duplicated over into the list, if it were split out. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 23:09, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Hanseatic_League ? Just curious, or if this is essentially it, here. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 19:17, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Given there's a fair few of us working on this article at the moment; I think we should reform the WikiProject, personally. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 23:10, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. I promise to try to write up an Economics section which I mentioned before, as I still think that's the biggest glaring omission from the article, but being busy it might take me a bit of time to get around to it.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:40, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

No problem; we all have real lives to lead, after all ;o)

I've reactivated the WikiProject and will spend a little time sorting that out over the next few days and weeks. I won't get a lot done this weekend, though, as I'll be at a one-day conference on Saturday. If anyone wants to go sign up for the project, please go add yourself at Wikipedia:WikiProject Hanseatic League/Users. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 22:59, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that. As a side project, can we detail all the specific errors in the Penguin map? I'd like to follow up with the publisher. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 23:09, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

And as compared to the 1902 (?) map, Dunaburg (Daugavpils) is implied to be a foreign outpost under Novgorod? The Hansa has been an area of interest but I've admittedly gotten quite rusty. I was planning to dust off the cobwebs when I got to the Hansa in my upgrade of the History of Riga article. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 19:35, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Would the Kontor be aided with a hierarchy indicating the primary city and satellites? Just thinking out loud. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 20:50, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It is inaccurate to say that Lufthansa is a legacy of the Hansa. Hansa means trade in German and LuftHansa has nothing to do with the League and is not their legacy. Macrhino (talk) 10:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Although hansa might strictly speaking mean trade, this is not a common word for it, you instead say "handel". And the Lufthansa name makes no sense like that as it would then mean "airtrade". The name Lufthansa is a direct reference to the Hanseatic League. The wording does not claim that Lufthansa is a descendant of the Hansa. --OpenFuture (talk) 13:33, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

accourding to the german article hanse is Old High German for Group 95.208.187.120 (talk) 15:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

they called themselfe dudesche hanse. today its called deutsche hanse. should be in the english wiki aswell or is this some sort of national thing? source, german wiki — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.200.46.188 (talk) 15:11, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

"Dudesche Hanse" is the old form Low German version of "Deutsche Hanse". --Saddhiyama (talk) 17:01, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

i know. thats why i wrote it. shouldn't it be in the article? thats what it's used to be, a league of german merchants. the aricle just calls it hanseatic league. in german that would even be incorrect but it should at least be mentioned that their name is deutsche hanse or dudesche hanse. archeologist can identify hanse buildings all over europe just by looking at the foundation of a destroyed building and than they know whether or not a building is german and therefore a hanse building. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.200.46.188 (talk) 15:50, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Why are all the names given in German? (Hansetag, Tagfahrt) Someone should translate them to what they were actually called.193.174.122.76 (talk) 19:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd agree that the first time a historical name is used we should indicate current in parentheses. Most materials of the time and later scholarship tend to use the place-names of the times, so just following normal convention here. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 21:24, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

names are given in German because German was the official language of the hanse (Low German to be totally correct, but that is a variant of German) btw the name of the hanseatic league was dudesche hanse (in Low German - deutsche Hanse in Modern Standard German)95.208.187.120 (talk) 14:55, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

and since the term hanse could be translated into English as league (actually it is Old High German for Group) the term hanseatic league is a bit strange - I know it is the common terminology in English yet it still a bit weird ("league of the league/group")95.208.187.120 (talk) 15:02, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The article appears misleading - having a branch of the Hansa in the town does not make it a hansa port, or settlement.

Describing Hull as a "Subsidiary Hanseatic settlements" Hanseatic_League#Subsidiary_Hanseatic_settlements is close to nonsense. Appear on a map in a document about the hanseatic league eg [10] kleinere Niederlassungen in Handelsniederlassungen der Hanse does not make it a member in any way. The only places that should be mentioed are those Hansestädte - the rest were not part of the hansa - the organisation simply had offices/warehouses there.

Ditto the statement in addition to the major Kontors, individual Hanseatic ports had a representative merchant and warehouse - is misleading - it is a too broad definition of a hanseatic port to have had a warehouse in it.. (or perhaps it means that the warehouses in non-hansa cities were run by invididual hansa ports? ) - in which case which port ran Hull, Lynn, etc ??

None of the history's of Hull I am aware of make any reference to it being part of the Hansa, having a settlement, or even having a warehouse.. eg Gent, Sheahan, Nichols. In Gillet & MacMahon it states - p.82 "The trade between Bergen and Iceland was largely in the hands of the Hanse merchants ... Merchants of Hull and Bristol would have regarded it as a gross neglect of commercial fundamentals if they had not committed piracy against ships of Hamburg and Danzig". (not the actions of a member?)

Nevertheless, it is clear that there was trade with Hansa merchant, - what is disputed is that there was any other association with the Hanseatic league.Oranjblud (talk) 17:54, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I changed "Subsidiary Hanseatic settlements" to "trading posts". But I couldn't find any evidence of an office or warehouse in Hull. So that must remain disputed.Oranjblud (talk) 18:01, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Note - the article on Beverley (near Hull) refers to Beverley Beck being a trading post of the Hanseatic League with a reference - if that helps you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.249.223.14 (talk) 00:33, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

In the German Wikipedia about the Hanse is to read the following:

"Auf den Hansetagen 1629 und 1641 wurden Hamburg, Bremen und Lübeck beauftragt, das Beste zum Wohle der Hanse zu wahren. 1669 hielten die letzten in der Hanse verbliebenen Städte, Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Danzig, Rostock, Braunschweig, Hildesheim, Osnabrück und KÖLN den letzten Hansetag in Lübeck ab, wobei die drei erstgenannten den Schutz der im Ausland befindlichen Kontore übernahmen.", see for ^[1].

The essence of this is that there were still 9 cities remaining during the last Hanseday held in Lübeck in 1669 incl. the town of COLOGNE. Is there any explanation why in the English Wikipedia it is noted that Cologne left / has been suspended in 1475 (for ever)? Wasn't it so that Cologne has been excluded from the Hanse in 1475 just for a while and somewhen in the aftermath Cologne rejoined the Hanse?

Is there anyone out there who is able to give an answer about this matter?

Further is there anybody who can state a reasonable translation from "Kurköln" into English? Or is there none translation of the prefix "Kur" in this term "Kurköln"?

Thx so far.

HiFolksItsMe (talk) 13:45, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Re "Ten years later Groningen wasn't part of a Hansa fleet against King Waldemar of Denmark to protect the free navigation through the Sont", I gather this means I think what we call in English "the Sound" - Sunden in Danish I think, which is the strait between Copenhagen and the Swedish mainland; sont goes to a page about the French verb, seems like that should be a disambig or have a hatnote; I'd add it maybe but need confirmation that Sont is the Sound.Skookum1 (talk) 05:06, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

The link in citation 24 no longer works, and leads to a "page not found" page. A new source/sources will need to be found. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.75.181.126 (talk) 10:14, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I don't know if this has been raised before, but browsing some related pages I noticed the adjectives Hansa and Hanseatic are often used interchangeably. At least in German historiography, "Hanse" and "Hanseatisch" have two different meanings, with Hansa referring to the (Medieval) trade league (13th to 17th century), and Hanseatic referring to the subsequent (economic and political) alliance of the three city-states of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck (17th to 20th century). The page title Hanseatic League is probably one of the reasons for this mixing. --109.45.2.136 (talk) 11:32, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Notwithstanding "Hans Town" after Han Sloane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Sloane, where does the historic English wording "Hans-Town" (as in, "An Old Hans-Town")stand anent handling the words "Hansa" and "Hanseatic"?

Is this table on wax exports really warranted? There are a number of goods listed as exports, but wax does not seem to be of particular importance. The current placement of this table sandwiches text down to one-word lines, and it hardly seems useful to have such a specific table on one product. I'm moving the table here for the time being, as I adjust the images, but I wonder whether it should be retained. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 01:58, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@Laszlo Panaflex: Dear Laszlo Panaflex,
Thank you for the recent improvements you've applied to the article; great job. I don't know anything about the importance of wax at the time of the league; so I will leave it to more knowledgeable colleagues to decide what's best to do about the table. It may be that wax was an important commodity for some professional trades at the time but I am only speculating.
For my part, I've augmented on your recent effort by adjusting the size of the map within the Infobox, and also increased the size of the picture (under the Infobox) to match that of the Infobox. Please feel free to revert if you conclude it was better before. Thanks.
(I like your username, by the way... )
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.^{(talk)(guestbook)} 10:20, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi, casual user here.. I went to this page just now, and two image links were broken with empty boxes, and the icon of a broken picture in the upper left corner.. I quickly went to the page source, and found that the Image filenames are really badly suited to Internet and file system storage.. aside from german umlauts in the image filenames, they have spaces and a pair of carets ?? These image file names set off all kinds of unnecessary problems. It would be far better to rename images like that. Since I am not a Wikipedia expert, I just noted the problems here. thx --Brian

URL:

.../Fotothek_df_ps_0005300_Rath%C3%A4user_%5E_Kirchen_%5E_Basiliken.jpg

Page Content: ...\[\[File:Fotothek df ps 0005300 Rathäuser ^ Kirchen ^ Basiliken.jpg| — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.36.157.248 (talk) 21:58, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Hans Town ward... https://www.kcfc.org.uk/brompton-hans-town-ward

and the Hans Town bollards therein... http://bollardsoflondon.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/hans-town-1819.html

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.85.43 (talk) 19:49, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

The infobox and the templates say 1358 (unsourced), but the article text says 1356. — Henry chianski (talk) 21:52, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

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Did the hanseatic league include jews?

Excellent question! Since 'membership' in the League was for towns and cities, not people, I'm guessing your question is more along the lines "Were Jewish merchants allowed to get the same protections as Germanic (or whatever local culture) merchants if they lived in a Hanseatic League town." I do note that trading towns were more open to allowing Jewish settlement, as seen in Voigtländer, Nico, and Hans-Joachim Voth. “PERSECUTION PERPETUATED: THE MEDIEVAL ORIGINS OF ANTI-SEMITIC VIOLENCE IN NAZI GERMANY.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 127, no. 3, 2012, pp. 1339–1392., www.jstor.org/stable/23251987. But this doesn't necessarily mean that Jews got citizen status. It also seems that Jewish communities weren't allowed to be settled in these towns until after the Middle Ages - closer to the 16th through 18th centuries. Luebeck didn't allow Jews to live there until the 19th century! I need to look into this more. LTC (Ret.) David J. Cormier (talk) 15:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

According to Altmann, Berthold. “Jews and the Rise of Capitalism: Economic Theory and Practice in a Westphalian Community.” Jewish Social Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 1943, pp. 163–186. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4464497 , Jews were able to thrive in trade after the Thirty Years' War 'because' the hanseatic League became ineffective: " Of greater importance to the development of Jewish commerce, however, was the fact that Jews were permitted in the retail dry goods trade and, except for a short period, retained this right. The infiltration of Jews into the sphere of guild-controlled occupations was facilitated by the fact that, after the Thirty Years War, the enterprise of the Hanseatic merchants was all but paralyzed. The grain trade had reached such a decline, that the magistrates were impelled to take over the commercial task of deliveries.'6 The guild of the dry goods merchants was dissolved in the middle of the seventeenth century." (p. 166) LTC (Ret.) David J. Cormier (talk) 15:56, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

There were protections for Jewish merchants in some places, though. Lindberg cites on p. 658 "Another prominent group was the Sephardic Jews, who in the aftermath of Philip II's annexation of Portugal in 1580 left that country to escape the Inquisition. The refugees from Portugal were few in number, only about twenty households around 1610 but they were prominent merchants with many contacts and a high turnover in trade.77 The Hamburg Senate protected the Portuguese Jews much as it did the English community." (Lindberg, Erik. “The Rise of Hamburg as a Global Marketplace in the Seventeenth Century: A Comparative Political Economy Perspective.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 50, no. 3, 2008, pp. 641–662. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27563693.)